Sperone
Westwater is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Charles
LeDray. For his second solo show at the gallery, LeDray will exhibit
twelve new sculptures, as well as a fourth installment of his ongoing
project “Village People.”

“Village
People” (2003-2006) presents a procession of 21 storied hats made by
the artist. Placed high on the wall, the multiple identities/ideologies
that this series represents are seen together in an increasingly
expanded context. According to Holland Cotter, “Mr. LeDray’s sculptures
feel dense with compressed energy and, perhaps for that reason, seem to
command monumental stretches of surrounding space.” While maintaining
fidelity to each element’s real world counterpart, LeDray’s process of
condensing information also renders these objects unfamiliar.

“Party
Bed,” which takes as its form a bed, decked out in striped sheets and
floral bedding, is piled high with an accumulation of assorted coats
and accessories. This seemingly literal presentation of coats left by
party guests is charged by an ambiguity of meaning and an intense
physical process. This impressive group of new works further emphasizes
Ken Johnson’s statement that “LeDray is one of those rare artists who
bring to art-making no ideological program but only an acutely personal
way with materials and a fabulously unpredictable imagination.”

Fabricated
from a long and varied list of materials, LeDray’s sculptures—whether
presented individually or collectively in parts—challenge notions of
scale. These works, however, offer little or no indication of the
complex processes by which they were created. The media for one work
alone include: acrylic paint, Alumalite, brass, embroidery floss, epoxy
resin, glitter, various fabrics, oil-based enamel paint, gold-plate,
rhodium-plate, patina, paper, pearlescent paint, plastic, sawdust, SO
Strong coloring, steel, string, thread and wood. When the extensive
labors undertaken in the making of each sculpture are understood, the
works take on an astonishing quality in their opposition of the
familiar and the irrational.

Born
in Seattle in 1960, LeDray lives and works in New York. In 2002-2003,
LeDray was the subject of a major traveling survey exhibition organized
by the ICA Philadelphia, which toured to the Arts Club of Chicago,
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Seattle Art Museum. In 1993,
LeDray received the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award and in 1997
he was the recipient of the Prix de Rome from the American Academy in
Rome. The artist’s work can be found in many major public collections
including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of
American Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Hammer Museum at UCLA, and the
Wadsworth Atheneum.